Some handheld wireless communications devices, such as the BlackBerry® by Research in Motion Limited, are configured to enable a user to send out an emergency message in a duress situation. If a user is under duress and being forced to unlock the handheld device, the user merely has to enter a modified password to trigger the sending of an e-mail message to a predetermined duress notification address, which is either a single e-mail address of a desired recipient or a distribution list (as determined by a configurable duress notification policy). The modified password can simply be a variation of the usual password, such as, for example, transposing the first character to the end of the password.
As a safety feature, as is the case with current BlackBerry® models, the handheld device does not save a copy in the sent messages in the list, nor does it show the network communication arrows when sending.
In order to satisfy an increasingly security-conscious population, further improvements and refinements to this basic technology remain highly desirable.
It will be noted that throughout the appended drawings, like features are identified by like reference numerals.